Sandeep PurewalCasual vs formal, comfortable vs styled and common vs classy – in the past there was always a very clear divide between these fashions, that being that one was considered fashionable and the other was considered not.
You could look at the clothes of a man on the street and know almost instantly where they were going or where they had come from. It seems like we’ve all had to choose between these two polar opposites in every aspect of life, but not anymore.
Casual has been given a brand new definition thanks to luxury sportswear and loungewear brands and dressing casual now has unlimited options.
We love nothing more than having options. It seems that every step forward we take as a society is towards giving people more options. We never want to be told what we can and can’t do.
Take visiting the casino, for example. A lot of great casinos have a dress code that prevents the fashion-forward idealists from playing the slots. That’s why so many people are playing slots online these days.
People want more options about what they wear and what they play and online slots can give them the freedom to choose. You’ll find that online slots have more games to choose from than slot machines and you can choose where you play form, what you wear while you play and you can choose from way more variety of payouts, themes and limits.
We appreciate having options which is why fashion has started to give us a lot more to choose from. Self-expression is one of the diving factors of some of the latest trends, which means that we all want to look different, and that can be a pretty demanding request to ask designers. But, they’ve done their best to meet our requirements. We’ve seen subcultures and countercultures making their way into mainstream and fashion reinvented sportswear and loungewear. So, why would anyone accept that a suit is the only option for male formalwear?
Fashion has changed so much that we’ve learned that being well dressed means more than just wearing a tuxedo and slicking your hair back. In fact, purely formal outfits are a surprisingly rare sight on the catwalks these days.
Designers are always looking for ways to reimagine classic styles, and nothing is more universally acknowledged as ‘classic’ than a man’s suit. We’ve seen the iconic suit completely deconstructed in recent trends, taken apart completely in New York Fashion Week in the Hugo Boss collection earlier this year and male formal fashion was completely reimagined in one of Mitchell Belk’s photoshoots.
When structured formalwear is paired with casual, more lively pieces a fascinatingly unique look is created that doesn’t quite belong anywhere. These sorts of the looks are the reason why some people just don’t get fashion. They see the photographs and tell the person next to them “it’s nice, but where would you wear that sort of thing?”. The typical response would be “anywhere”.
Rather than choosing between function and form, marrying the two seems to be the way forward this season. Try mixing and matching different formal and casual elements to redefine ‘smart casual’.
Match dress shoes with jeans, chunky knit jumpers with suit trousers, or swap the jacket for a wool coat. Some of the best trends for Spring 2017 are pretty daring, so it’s the perfect time to take that risk-taking fashion and apply it across the board.
Give your formal a completely new identity by incorporating some of the best casual trends this season and give the classic suit the much needed update it deserves.